Are low-level visual features of scenes associated with perceived restorative qualities?

Exposure to the natural environment has been associated with cognitive benefits. Attention Restoration Theory (ART) proposes that the physical environment, including the natural environment, can be cognitively restorative if the setting embodies a set of high-level qualities (e.g., fascination). However, these restorative qualities are typically measured subjectively. In this study, we examined whether a set of objectively measured low-level visual features predict subjective restorative qualities that are based on ART. Eighty-eight participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk rated 592 images on naturalness and four restorative qualities. Color and spatial features of images explained 5–20% of the variance in ratings of restorative qualities. We also found that visual features partially mediated the relationship between naturalness and restorative qualities. These results suggest that a small but significant portion of the perception of restorative qualities is grounded in objectively measured low-level visual features. Further research is needed to understand the potential for and limits of visual features as predictors of restorative qualities.